API WARS: DELIVERING THE DE FACTO STANDARD

OpenStack. CloudStack. Amazon now lets Eucalyptus customers link their private clouds to AWS. The cloud industry has grown up, and after six years, Amazon is still on top. Do the open-source efforts have a chance, or is this recent fragmentation the last straw?

If AWS is the WalMart of cloud, is OpenStack the Soviet Union?

Some of the most dynamic part of the presentation was this discussion..

Kemp took Citrix and Eucalyptus to task for reinforcing Amazon’s dominance rather than embracing the OpenStack project. As you can imagine, Eucalyptus Systems CEO Marten Mickos and Citrix Systems Cloud Platforms Group GM Sameer Dholakia took exception to Kemp’s claims, particularly his characterization of their cloud platforms as closed.

Both pointed out that their platforms are open-source, just like OpenStack, but Kemp refused to accept that definition, saying the companies developed the core of platform internally and then released their software to the open-source community. Kemp contrasted that with the OpenStack, which is developed top-to-bottom by its broad membership with no large company having any outsized influence.